The document must have the proper DOCTYPE to tell the browser how to interpret it:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
and start the HTML with a namespace declaration:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xml:lang="en" lang="en" />
and specify character encoding:
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
web standards
web standards are the technical specifications and guidelines to standardize web technology. By adopting web standards we can build accessible websites that can be updated efficiently.
web standards allow us to strategically separate web pages into 3 components: structure, presentation and behavior. By effectively separating the content and the presentation you can manage the site through a flexible and modular implementation.
designing to the standards shortens development time and improves stability, making pages easier to maintain and more accessible. Improving accessibility ensures that every page will be useable and available to everyone, regardless of browser or platform.
- markup is controlled by HTML or XML
- presentation is controlled by CSS
- behavior is controlled by the DOM
benefits of web standards
- better performance because there's less code which results in faster pages
- streamlined content management because of the separation of content and presentation
- improved accessibility means more people can see it, in more browsers, on more devices
W3C
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops standards for a better Web.
